3 Day StartupHow Students Get Started2016-12-08T22:27:08Zhttp://3daystartup.org/feed/atom/WordPressellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1957382016-12-08T22:27:08Z2016-12-08T22:24:43ZIn 2008, now CEO Justin Beck participated in a 3 Day Startup program at the University of Texas-Austin. Like all of our participants, we knew that he had some truly incredible entrepreneurial potential. And, in Beck’s case, he applied it almost immediately. That same year, Beck and three other students took their computer design know-how and a cool idea and decided to take that leap, band together, and create the Madison-based gaming company PerBlue.

We spoke with COO Forrest Woolworth about their journey.

In eight years, PerBlue has grown to over 40 employees and recently sold their popular mobile games, DragonSoul, to GREE International Entertainment for $35 million. And this wasn’t just any game; DragonSoul is one of the top 50 grossing apps on the app store and is one of the best performing Western RPGs in the world. It was a validating and long-awaited marker of their success that Woolworth would never have expected when they started all those years ago.

“We were all undergrads at the University of Wisconsin and we were mostly computer science and engineering majors. And this was right after the iPhone had been released and before Android was even a thing. So it was a really different time for the gaming market and for technology in general. But we thought these new smartphones were really cool and had a lot of potential for what they could be. We started this whole things pretty much saying ‘you know, let’s make a game for these devices and see what happens.’”The now successful gaming company, though, wasn’t always a certainty. Woolworth and the team had to come to terms with the risk they were going to take early.

“Several of us were trying to decide if we wanted to take job offers after graduation or should we do this whole PerBlue thing.” It’s a decision that every entrepreneur has had to make somewhere along the line: choosing between passion and guaranteed stability.

But that was a decision that Woolworth himself hadn’t fully anticipated. He recalls:

“When I started undergrad, I didn’t necessarily go into it thinking I would start my own company. I always just thought I would end up working for a tech company on the west coast. I thought that’s just what you do as a CS major. But when the opportunity to start PerBlue came up, we all kind of realized that this was a really cool opportunity to take advantage of and try to pursue.”

And pursue it they did. Young, hungry, and talented, the PerBlue team decided to take the leap. According to Woolworth, “The thought process was looking at a market perspective with the timing for mobile devices and smartphones back in 2008 and 2009. We looked at just how much potential we thought there was there, and we had this incredible team already assembled.”

As Woolworth tells it, forming that core team in college was invaluable to the success they’ve found. “The team and the people have been critical at every stage of the company as we’ve grown. You need to have the right people on the team. It’s incredibly important to future success. You have to make sure that they are high caliber and are committed to the mission.”

Which leads to the critical truth that aspiring entrepreneurs need to consider when choosing to pursue a venture: that the team is more important than the idea. As with Woolworth and his PerBlue cofounders, it is often the strength and commitment of the team that allows the idea to actually become a revenue generating, successful venture. Woolworth counts the collection of people who started the company –– all of whom are still involved in some way –– as the number one source for their growth. And that growth has been substantial.

“We bootstrapped our company really early on with a little friends and family money for the first little while there, working out of our college apartments for the first two years.” They have since raised $5 million in investment prior to the $35 million sale of DragonSoul, but Woolworth still talks about those bootstrapping days as one of the most exciting for him and the company.

Though, he admits, nothing beats seeing the TV commercial for DragonSoul come on in the bar. “I just thought that was crazy.” He says, “I never thought that would be the case.”

And on the sale of that game (which is still Woolworth’s favorite to play)?

“It’s a really good validation point as a company and a team that we have been able to build something successful and one of the top 50 grossing apps on the appstore in the US and grew into one of the top 10 western RPGs in the appstore. That’s one of the things we set out to do. We wanted to make a really awesome RPG and it was really good validation that we were able to accomplish that. It’s kind of the feather in the cap.”

Woolworth and the PerBlue team have come a long way since 2008, and they have learned a lot about what you have to do to make a successful gaming startup. They are a testament to how having the right team and an idea you love can lead to some life-changing results.

But, Woolworth himself is the first to say, “making a game is not just about making something that looks cool and is fun to play, it’s about building that to an audience that is actually going to want to buy it and making sure there is a market for what you’re building. In order to make a successful game you need to find out how to make it sustainable. It’s really not just about making it look cool.”

Though, with these incredible games, it’s clear PerBlue has mastered that as well.

We at 3DS are proud to have had members of the PerBlue team be a part of our early programs. Their passion, innovation, and continued support of local entrepreneurship and aspiring entrepreneurs encapsulates why we do what we do.

We look forward to seeing the next great strides they make in the gaming industry.

3 Day Startup (3DS) is honored to have been selected once again to lead the Austria to Austin Student Startup Exchange. Through the generous and increased support of the U.S. Embassy Vienna, 3DS will now be able to provide five additional Austrian university and Fachhochschule students with the opportunity to participate in the 2017 exchange.

“The Austria to Austin program implemented by 3DS was a stunning success last year and we look forward to 2017,” said U.S. Embassy Vienna Deputy Public Affairs Officer, Kellee Farmer. “Entrepreneurship is an American brand, and Austin is one of the most dynamic places to learn how we do it. Last year, the students returned from Austin ready to start a business, and looking to America for investment and partnership.”

Similarly to last year, the exchange will allow students to start early-stage companies and build innovation bridges between the U.S. and Austria. The students will also have the opportunity to attend the 3DS Global Roundup, 3DS’s annual conference that brings students and startup experts from all over the world together for a weekend of networking, keynote speakers, and shared experiences.

“We could not be more excited for the second edition of the Austria to Austin Student Startup Exchange,” said 3DS CEO, Cam Houser. “This program, which takes an immersive approach to engaging young Austrian leaders with Austin company founders, members of industry, universities, and government officials, is transformative. This is how you create leaders of the economies of the future.”

If you or your company are interested in supporting the 2017 Austria and Austin Student Startup Exchange, please contact Kelly Pratt at kelly@3daystartup.org. We look forward to working with you to further support our future Austrian leaders!

See the highlights from last year’s international entrepreneurial journey here:

The summer of 2014 marked a defining moment for 3 Day Startup (3DS) and our understanding of how powerful of a force entrepreneurship can be. It was during the height of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when both sides were sending bombs across the border –– forcing this intense violence even further into the foundation of their societies. And it was in this climate that 3 Day Startup began an engagement to help bring those groups together.

Through the interconnected web of 3DS participants and mentors that so often yields new programs and new ideas, 3DS entered into a partnership with the MIT affiliated non-profit, Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow (MEET).

MEET is one of the most dedicated agents of change and progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations. At its core, MEET is an organization whose mission is, at the core, to use the experience of Israeli and Palestinian students working together as a tool to create positive social and political impact as leaders in their communities. And, for their summer program in 2014, they asked to partner with 3DS on their efforts.

The potential impact was immediately clear to program manager, Maia Donohue and board member and facilitator, Ruchit Shah. It was a program designed for MEET’s alumni –– to keep them engaged and their relationship with MEET and with each other alive.

One of the magical components about 3 Day Startup is that the connections made in one place transfer across the world. No matter how ideologically, culturally, or geographically separate our students and our communities are, there is a shared perspective and an understanding that 3 Day Startup alumni develop. But we had yet to fully adapt that from the nature of the program itself supporting connections between participants, to using to program as a tool to specifically forge a bond between participants from traditionally opposing or dissimilar societies.

At the time, it was an opportunity for 3DS as an organization to take entrepreneurship education to a place where we hadn’t been before: using entrepreneurship to help students living in conflict create something greater than their divide.

How did this program help to navigate that climate?

MEET and 3DS teach students how to make this progress by embedding the importance of constructive disagreement. The conversation is rarely about cultural borders once they enter the program. Pretense and conflict dissipates in favor of dedicated, creative students trying to start companies and form ideas that can change their worlds. In this program, once the modules were over and the teams set loose to work, the room filled with the familiar sounds of company disputes –– that the market validation wasn’t strong enough, that no customer would pay that much or the venture couldn’t survive by charging so little.

Through entrepreneurship education and time constraints during a three day program, any disputes or disagreements are centralized and constructive: always pushing towards a better solution and a better team. Conflict and competition are used constructively to push the participants to become better, more efficient versions of themselves.

When students experience a 3DS program, we see a transformation across countries, ages, and cultures. We consistently observe our participants realizing just how much potential they have and how much they can really get done in three days. And more often than not, what they can accomplish is orders of magnitude higher than what they thought they could accomplish in even a year.

And in this capacity, our Israeli and Palestinian participants were no different. Introducing students, particularly those in unstable ecosystems, to this kind of model is an empowering force.

But, there was also a transformation more specific to these students and this program. The fruits of their hard work and creativity served as a demonstration that they could actually make real change as Israelis and Palestinians. Of course, at their age we all struggle somewhat with a feeling of helplessness, like we are swept up in a wave of outside forces that we can’t control or tame. For these students, however, who truly do live in an environment, particularly during that time, where exacting control over your situation or the trajectory of your life can seem difficult — if not impossible — being able to feel a degree of agency and control can have an even more amplified effect.

And part of that realization of autonomy, comes from the opportunity to cross that cultural and physical barrier to work on something greater than themselves.

So why is entrepreneurship the best vehicle for this kind of change, this kind of impact?

Well, the short answer is: creation and teamwork.

At 3DS, through our programs and our partners, we know that championing entrepreneurship leads to increases in creative problem solving and constructive, team-oriented learning. As humans, it is in our very nature to create things –– to analyze a situation or a problem and create a solution or a tool to alleviate it. There is joy in that type of creation.

What most people lack is an adequate outlet. And, social creatures that we are, we have a desire to share what we make. Even in the cases of now mythical geniuses like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, there is a pattern of collaboration, a mentor, a teammate, a co-founder, or a right-hand man who helped to push their innovations and solutions further than they ever could have done alone.

No society can put too much emphasis on these qualities. And even if one disagrees with this premise, it is difficult to deem it insignificant when one sees the kind of energy and excitement that students get when they make progress towards their solution, when they see their idea taking shape and come to the overwhelming realization “I can do this.”

More than that, however, putting the focus on entrepreneurship and creation helps students to move away from negative aspects of society that distance them from each other. When we shift this focus, students are able to overcome their differences and capitalize on their unique skills and talents

The creative problem solving that comes with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education also helps to foster empathy. We saw this tendency particularly come to light in our MEET programs, where one of the ideas (called Sweepus) was essentially an “uber for trash-pickup” that catered predominantly to a problem that only the Palestinian participants faced.

The Israeli participants on this team might never have come to this idea by themselves; it was not a problem that was part of their reality. But realizing that the lack of an organized, institutionalized trash-pickup service impacted the lives of their Palestinian counterparts opened them up to an understanding of a world outside their own.

And this project was one of many social-innovation projects that we saw at our MEET, Israel-Palestine programs. However, supporting these programs and fostering these connections isn’t always easy in a country or society wrought with conflict.

MEET faces barriers of their own simply administering programs and bringing people together. Just because they (and we) know that something works, doesn’t make it easy. As the on-the-ground representatives and advocates of their programs, partners, and methodologies, MEET faces all the daily difficulties that come with trying to make change in a region torn by conflict. The issues they face with just getting the permits and transportation to get the Palestinian students to their programs alone would be enough to make many stop trying. But if we can help show that it’s worth it and that progress can be made, then we are doing our job.

Because it’s a job worth doing. Engaging people of different backgrounds, cultures, and viewpoints in a constructive way is a step towards building bridges and forging positive relationships.

What makes entrepreneurship an ideal vehicle for this work is that it builds these bridges and relationships while actively solving problems that the groups face.

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1890002016-11-15T18:14:38Z2016-11-09T15:26:00ZWhen an aspiring entrepreneur first sets their mind to starting a business, the amount of work that needs to be done can seem overwhelming. And by that we don’t just mean finding an idea, building a product, and seeing your vision come to life. That’s all the fun stuff. But, in the world of business and entrepreneurship, the standard practice has traditionally been to spend a long time — often between six months to a year — on developing an idea and channeling it into a business plan to present to investors. This tradition was not only extremely time consuming, but was also highly risky. More often than not, an entrepreneur would toil over their business plan without ever testing it out with customers to see whether it would hold up or collapse.

That timeline can make or break an entrepreneur. Because the time they spend on a detailed business plan for a product that has no market or value to customers is time wasted. Particularly now, when technology is constantly accelerating the rate of change in any given market, young entrepreneurs can’t afford to wait anymore. For their companies to be successful, they have to constantly change and adapt. Entrepreneurs must continuously learn about their customer base, how well their solution addresses problem, and how others are currently solving the problem. These variables are not stagnant, they are ever-changing. And if young entrepreneurs in early-stage startups aren’t changing with them, they are falling behind. Fortunately for them, there exists an alternative far more in-line with the needs and operations of an early-stage startup : the Lean Startup.

The business philosophy of “Lean Thinking” had been around for many years prior to the Lean Startup itself. At it’s core, Lean Thinking was all about decreasing waste in companies and organizations. Steve Blank, a prominent entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and Stanford professor, brought this methodology to startups by advocating Customer Development as a crucial step in the early-stages of a startup. These were the initial advancements that led to the development of the Lean Startup methodology.

In 2011 Eric Ries expanded on Lean Thinking and Blank’s Customer Development, effectively changing the landscape of entrepreneurship with his book The Lean Startup. Ries’ concept of the Lean Startup centers around the idea that startup entrepreneurs should launch with an MVP (minimum viable product) that isn’t perfect, finalized, or decked out with complicated features and then engage with potential customers and investors in a continuous feedback loop.

This loop encompasses the core of the Lean Startup: “Build, Measure, Learn.” And with it, Ries demonstrates the need for entrepreneurs to build their MVP as soon as possible, deliver it to customers and measure its effectiveness and the customer response, and learn from these metrics to reconfigure and improve the MVP.

The Lean Startup itself has iterated and grown beyond Ries. At 3 Day Startup, we have every participant at every program complete Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas. The Lean Canvas is an adaptation of the Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas; and Ash Maurya created it in the Lean Startup spirit — which champions the fast, concise, and effective startup. Lean Canvas promises an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan, focusing on problems, solutions, key metrics, and competitive advantages.

And the Lean Canvas is “lean” in every sense of the word. It allows entrepreneurs to capture business model assumptions in one page so they can document their process as they build, measure, and learn about their solution.

The most important aspect of the Lean Canvas is the impetus it puts on measuring the effectiveness of the product and the customer reaction; learning the strengths and weaknesses of an idea from those metrics allows you to easily rebuild and adapt until you get it right.

Startup entrepreneurs need to engage in constant learning and constant growth. Adhering to the Lean Startup model can seem like a lot of work, but it has allowed some of this generation’s greatest innovators and change-makers to break free from the constricting, traditional business model. All with the idea that interactions with real customers can and will do more for your startup than 200 assumption-filled pages of a business plan.

So if you have a problem that you want to solve, get out there and find the people it’s addressing. They are your true experts.

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1837702016-11-15T18:15:05Z2016-10-17T17:20:03Z“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” William Gibson

There is an almost romantic understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship that pervades societies across the globe. To a certain degree, the general public believes that the answers to the world’s problems — to world hunger, to poverty, to global warming — are trapped in the head of a young, ingenious innovator and we are just waiting for that technology. And to an extent, that belief may be true. After all, innovation and entrepreneurship are powerful forces that have the potential to create outsized change in people, in communities, and in the world.

But, the public perception of success in innovation and entrepreneurship so often revolves around the Silicon Valleys of the world. And there is an innate problem with that perception. However bright and shining as Silicon Valley may be as a beacon of entrepreneurship, it is equally inaccessible and intangible to many (particularly on a global scale). It is a brand of entrepreneurship that is accessible to a proverbial 1% of young entrepreneurs.

Of course, there are legitimate reasons that this perception of entrepreneurship persists. At least one study purports that “cities are the principal engines of innovation and economic growth.” And the bigger that city, the greater the rate of innovation overall. Making it, according to this study, statistically unlikely that a student in rural Georgia will come up with a tech solution more innovative and cutting-edge than one from Silicon Valley.

They are already in Gibson’s “future” there.

So all hope is lost and if you want to be a successful entrepreneur and innovator you have to get to the those places, right?

Well, the answer is “of course not.”

The newest, most cutting edge tech or software innovation isn’t the only brand of innovation. And what is “innovative” varies depending on the circumstances of the individual community or society. In the same way that entrepreneurs must build scalable products and services, so must entrepreneurship itself scale to suit the community it seeks to impact.

At their core, entrepreneurs are people who see a problem in an industry or in a society, decide to solve it, and follow through with that solution. These core qualities are not specific to a city, a country, or a person.

Entrepreneurship isn’t a place. It’s a mindset and a way of seeing the world. The scope of entrepreneurship transcends the next cool app.

3 Day Startup knows this to be true because of our work in different entrepreneurial ecosystems. In every program we see the different shapes that entrepreneurship takes and the different ways that students use it to impact their world, their future. Our students bring their own needs, experiences, and perspectives to our programs, and apply the skills they develop in different ways. At the University of Northern Alabama and Texas State, the students focused on small businesses and family-oriented ventures; at schools like the University of Texas, Austin (located in a startup hub) the students were more focused on a product that could scale up and solve a particular problem, often a tech-oriented one; and, at Harvard, students want to make an impact proportionate to the name and reputation of their school.

Each startup team innovates based on some component of their lives, their realities. And entrepreneurship should celebrate and foster the richness of their diverse approaches, not constrain their directions.

Even in countries and communities with the lowest job prospects and highest poverty rates, the “unique characteristics of entrepreneurs and their contribution to the economy can make it possible [to grow] faster and provide economic means to enhance social, health and environmental well-being.”

So why do some communities not embrace entrepreneurship as readily as others? Why isn’t this kind of path for students universally accepted and celebrated?

Well, part of that issue is that, just like a community’s social context plays an important role in the type of entrepreneurship that students engage in, a “community’s social context plays an important role in encouraging or discouraging entrepreneurship.” That is to say, different communities prioritize and perceive the potential benefit of entrepreneurship in different ways.

When entrepreneurship can benefit and impact every kind of community but communities are still reluctant to welcome it. When that happens, the potential innovators in those communities are stifled. And breaking into these talent pools and allowing them to flourish can create outsized opportunities and change where there were none before.

But changing a community’s social context and operations is no easy feat. It takes time, a shifting mindset, and a vehicle.

In the case of our organization, we’re going into those communities and showing that entrepreneurship is a viable option. We’re making a tangible difference by helping students become entrepreneurs and start their own companies. And we’re seeing the spark go off in these students and extend to blaze a trail through their schools and through their cities.

The fact that this spark so consistently ignites in such diverse communities tells us one thing: that entrepreneurship can change people’s realities for the better. This revelation is important, and it is necessary. In communities of all scales, incomes, backgrounds, opening up to what their talent, creativity, and innovation can accomplish is what’s going to determine the trajectory of their individual futures.

For this shift to happen, we must not only speak more candidly about the different ways that entrepreneurship can emerge in societies, but also champion entrepreneurial efforts everywhere –– no matter how small the community and no matter if they initially fail.

And we must always remember that outsized change can begin in the smallest corner of the world.

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1827712016-10-13T14:30:12Z2016-10-12T16:06:26ZWritten and contributed by Keely Malady, a twenty-something Architect and recent participant at 3DS Wade Institute in Melbourne, Australia. We are cross-posting this article from Medium. You can access the original article here.

This is a story about finding your tribe. An abused cliché, ‘tribe-speak’ is the height of uncool. Until it happens to you. And then it is everything. This is the story of my 3DS weekend.

I’d always imagined “finding your tribe” as a process of finding comfort. Comfort in yourself and your role in whichever group of people you find yourself agreeing with. I’m familiar with this sense of comfort, its ease of repetition, and its calming effects. But it can also numb your sense of contribution, and your ability act on intuition. The comfortable relies on you to stay constant. Accepting you with open arms at point of entry, comfort asks no more of you.

The next time that sense of comfort comes with a side of unease, be open to new potential.

Ten days ago, I didn’t know what a tribe could be. Ten days ago I, in preparation for the 3 Day Startup at Wade Institute (#3DS300) I sat down to write out some goals. Imposter syndrome had already set in, hours before the event had even started. My mind spun. What was it going to be like? Where did I fit in this room of the brightest business and tech? I had struggled in my work as an architect with not-hipster-enough self-doubt, so how in the world was I going to contribute to the hustler-hacker-hipster lean startup triad? What had my past-self got my present-self into, when it had cheerfully dashed out an application just a few weeks ago?

In this state, I did my homework — an ingrained habit of using preparation to quell doubt. I set out three SMART goals for the weekend;

One: put my hand up

Two: connect with others whose expertise is outside my own

Three: mention one of your ideas.

Reviewing those notes now, I’m embarrassed by just how meekly I wrote about #3 especially. I couldn’t actually get specific, measurable, attainable or realistic about it. All I had certain was time. Three days.

Assembled at Wade for refreshments, the group is a bright-eyed and eager contrast to the working week winding down outside. There is a vibrancy in the room as chatter gives way to attention, the introductory 3DS briefing given on-foot, with no time for note taking.

Small groups form to brainstorm ideas. Our group is cautious, as internal dialogues overwhelm external expression. Sharing is daunting whilst still working out the niggles and cracks between the unfolding reality and our own expectations of the weekend.

Always hyper-sensative to awkward pauses, I offer a gap-filler. “What about X?” Characteristically leading with the idea I was least emotionally invested in. The group warmed a little. “Or this other, what do you think of Y?”. We ran with this for a while, but decided the tech leap was too big for a startup, especially one that might only exist for a single weekend.

As we resigned Y, the group was no more. Compressed by circumstance, we had already begun to reform as a tribe, driving each idea beyond the individual. There is a gratifying beauty to be observed as the tribe forms, as previous strangers debate the merits of an idea you’ve struggled with for years.

With the assigned time nearing end, we’ve written just a scattering of ideas on the over sized white pad. The facilitator takes a seat at our table. Blank space stares back at us.
I inch closer, arms now resting on the cold surface, my mind seemingly as blank as the paper in front of us. Glancing around the group, I’m searching for support, a suggestion, something. They’re all leaning forward too, eyes fixed on the page.

In that moment, ten years of comfortable-but-not-quite-right babe to an end. Through graduations, resignations, and registration, fear and anxiety had been my constant companion. It had survived a quarter-life crisis of existential angst and sleepless nights. It had compelled me to endless networking events, strengths tests, personality assessments and oh so many sleepless nights. It had driven me to reach out and connect, spending two years writing about entrepreneurs taking the very leap I was so afraid of.
On the edge of my seat, I was comfortable no more.

“What about Z?”

I have no other way to explain my 3DS weekend. No other way I can reconcile the memory of being held so far out of my comfort zone that I forgot it’s history. No other way to reconcile the moments that I could share (out loud!) my personal, inner process of understanding the world. That I could be me, in public, with all the catches in my throat, all the brain-freezes on stage, and all the self-conscious inner voices, and be thriving.

3DS was thriving together, because there was no other way. Shared sleep deprivation and coffee refills, as well as a commitment to raising the best in each other to the next level. Holding in both hands the humility of knowing your limits and a willingness to learn from others, 3DS created a community capable of taking this complexity and making something of it.

A tribe comes together at the right place, and the right time for you. It could not have existed before you, nor without you. If a tribe falls in the forest, and you’re not there, the tribe did not exist. With this in mind, there is no such thing as ‘tribe envy’, nor the related ‘tribe competition’ or the inevitable ‘tribe regret’. There is no Mr & Mrs. Tribe-Joneses. Leave attachment to these at the door. Your tribe will form. A tribe can end. But the parts of you formed during that process will remain.

A tribe asks who you are as you enter, a unique set of skills, experience, dreams and ambition, then explodes that potential. In an instant, the various parts different than before. Responding to demands of the collective, learning in public enables the tribe to act, react and mature together.

This process is exhilarating, terrifying and gratifying. It demands fast failure, and fast recovery. In a compressed time frame ideas can flow from good to great, through questionable, to dead in an instant. Released into the public domain, they take on their own life, reactive to the needs of the crowd. As someone who usually seeks the wall, you might imagine this kind of churn to be nauseous. But the strength of the tribe is reassuring, and doesn’t permit private stagnation. Sparring between diverse experiences, debate reaches as crescendo where release can only be clarifying.

A tribe is not a group of people who agree with you, whose shared points of view lead to one sided debates. A tribe does not share a uniform, an aesthetic, or even a singular common goal. A tribe is not as big as a cohort, it’s not as middle management as a team, nor can it be as small as a partnership. A tribe is a group of individuals who sum is greater than their parts.

So I’ve become a walking cliche, a tribe-speaking-convert. But it’s a price I’m willing to pay. For the exchange of ideas and potential that continue to flow from our 3DS weekend are far reaching. Perceptive explosions experienced only a week or so ago, are still expanding, finding their place in the present. And so to “us” — this is my way of saying thank you — as the tribe once found, is never lost.

3 Day Startup is proud to be able to post the incredible stories of our alumni. They work they do inspires us every day. If you want to share your post-3DS story with our team, just contact us here

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1827562016-11-18T02:24:10Z2016-10-12T15:34:35ZThis past month, 3 Day Startup had the honor of having one of our team members selected for the 2016 East-West: The Art of Dialogue Fellowship. Alexis Taylor joined 21 American, Egyptian, and Lebanese fellows as a part of this initiative developed by Mr. Shafik Gabr Chairman and Managing Director of the Egyptian investment and development group called ARTOC. Chairman Gabr knows that non-governmental organizations can positively impact societies, which is why he formed this program to “provide opportunities for tomorrow’s leaders to create a meaningful impact on the lives of others within our increasingly globalized community.” Chairman Gabr, developed this fellowship as a tool to have citizens from different cultures and backgrounds come together to make change and work towards peace, greater international empathy, and cross-cultural understanding. These fellows came with backgrounds ranging from entrepreneurship to art to politics.

After rising from a pool of 600 applicants and progressing through a four step interview process, Taylor embarked on 2 exchange programs (one in Cairo and one in D.C. and New York) that cumulatively lasted approximately 20 days. In these 20 days, Taylor met with Egyptian and American entrepreneurs, educators, policymakers, and nonprofit leaders.

Though schedule was packed and the program intense, Taylor says that this experience has been one of the most valuable in her life. “It really pushed me out of my comfort zone…and I learned what it felt like to really be pushed to my limit as far as taking in information and trying to process what can be done to problem solve or make an impact.”

For Taylor, part of that impact meant a Egypt-US Startup Exchange that seeks to help solve the problem of youth unemployment in Egypt.

This problem is a particularly important one for Taylor because it represents how 3DS can do more to help engage students in a manner that creates outsized change in their communities. And it extends beyond just Egypt. “Through our 3DS lens it can seem — particularly from the outside — like we treat all entrepreneurs as the same [in temperament and practice]. But so many entrepreneurship ecosystems in the world — including some in the United States — have challenges with teamwork, they don’t have the same embedded pressure and culture for creative thinking, and they don’t have as high tolerance for risk taking because they are afraid of failure. It’s really important for us to remember that not everywhere is like Austin.” For Taylor, this means that we at 3DS need to work harder at trying to understand those underlying barriers and apprehension so that we can make the most impact possible in those communities with our programs.

I really came away with an understanding of how important it is for me to understand global issues, geopolitical issues, and politics. I think I know now that I really need to be plugged-in to our diplomatic relations and what we are doing. – Alexis Taylor

But what gives Taylor and the rest of us at 3 Day Startup hope is the work she saw being done to support early stage entrepreneurs. She remarks, “They are really trying to do a lot of community engagement and get people involved.” Seeing these things first hand, Taylor says, gave her a much better understanding for the difficulties and triumphs of Egyptian entrepreneurship initiatives.

“You just get such a different perspective, being there…I went in with no expectations for what I would see or experience, I tried to just go in with a blank slate. But just seeing the country and interacting with all of the different fellows, I learned a lot. About being a woman in Egypt, about wearing a Hijab, what they do on the weekends, and what their vision is for their own country. But even though many of their experiences were different, I really experiences a feeling of sameness and connectedness.”

For Taylor, seeing the beauty and entrepreneurial aspirations that her Egyptian fellows and and the incredible people she met during the fellowship would have a lasting impact on how she would approach entrepreneurship education in different countries or cultures. “I really came away with an understanding of how important it is for me to understand global issues, geopolitical issues, and politics. I think I know now that I really need to be plugged-in to our diplomatic relations and what we are doing.”

This understanding helped to shape Taylor’s perspective on her personal interactions with people, the work that 3DS can do as an organization, and international diplomacy at large.

“For 3DS,” Taylor says, “it really underlined for me how important the fact that we tune and calibrate our programs to suit different communities and ecosystems is. And having experiences like the Gabr fellowship can help us be more purposeful in how we do that and give us a greater understanding of different cultures, situations, and ways of doing things. The more we develop this knowledge, the greater our impact can actually be.”

Because, more than anything else, what Taylor took away from the Gabr fellowship was that we live in an incredibly interconnected world. Everything that we do as a country and as a society makes an impact that extends outward, beyond ourselves. Taylor emphasizes that the fellowship helped her discover how “we need to understand to world in a holistic way. The more we do this, the better work we can do as people, as a company, and as a part of this global community.”

Alexis Taylor is a Program Manager and Facilitator at 3 Day Startup. We are so proud of her acceptance to this Fellowship and her continued dedication to spreading entrepreneurship to schools and communities across the world.

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1812262016-10-13T21:52:13Z2016-10-05T15:33:48ZIt’s been a big year for 3DS. Sizable engagements with governments through projects like the Austria to Austin Startup Exchange and the US/Brazil Startup Connection have given us the opportunity to spread our vision of entrepreneurship to new students and new countries.

It brings us great pleasure to announce the most recent addition to those projects, an exciting partnership with the government of Queensland, Australia. Over the next 12 months, 3 Day Startup embarks on a six-program engagement with Advance Queensland in our shared goal of unlocking the entrepreneurial potential of universities. At the conclusion of these programs, four Queensland entrepreneurs will get the opportunity to visit the 3 Day Startup’s annual conference, the Global Roundup.

We are proud to partner with Advance Queensland. This initiative — led by the Queensland Government — aims to drive innovation, spur collaboration, create jobs, and foster Queensland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Advance Queensland is leading to tangible, positive changes in the region and opening doors for its youth.

In support of Advance Queensland’s work and their vision, the 3DS Team will deliver our entrepreneurship model — which has yielded successful startups in New York, Silicon Valley, and Austin — to Queensland’s already creative and innovative students at Griffith University, the University of Southern Queensland, and Central Queensland University. Through our experiential, student-based programs, 3 Day Startup looks forward to transforming them into entrepreneurs with the skills and mindsets to make changes and start new ventures.

Our 300 programs have shaped 11,000 student entrepreneurs who have founded successful companies, released winning products, raised over $70 million in capital, and achieved a handful of exits. These entrepreneurs make up an extensive and supportive network that now spans 30 countries around the world.

With Queensland’s addition to this international network, 3DS continues to fulfill our mission to educate the world’s next generation of innovators and give them the tools to be successful in any country and any community. It is this kind of exchange and global network that can truly allow students to become the world’s next big change-makers. Because, as we see in each of our programs, students have the potential, passion, and empathy to make a difference.

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1786062016-09-23T17:39:11Z2016-09-23T17:39:11Z3 Day Startup continues to grow and expand outside of the US, proving our programs can cultivate innovative minds and entrepreneurial successes in every country and community across the globe.

For the past two years, 3DS has engaged with the University of Rosario in Colombia to help foster innovation and aid the university and its students in becoming some of the most prominent innovation leaders in their country. This past month marked the second of our 3 program engagement designed to instill a recurring, inclusive, and collaborative entrepreneurship initiative within the university and the community.

3DS Rosario participants receive mentorship on the first day of the program.

This program not only demonstrates the outsized change that 3DS participants can make in their entrepreneurial ecosystems, but also proves that 3DS grows and evolves along with the students. The impact of this kind of programing doesn’t stagnate or diminish; rather, it compounds with each program and each iteration.

And, after our second program in the partnership, we can say with absolute certainty that 3DS Rosario exemplifies this growth. These students are well prepared, passionate, and hungry for the opportunity to turn their visions into realities. As Felipe Peña –– a participant in the most recent Rosario program –– describes, 3DS is not only a “good program for students who want to develop something” but also “teaches them not to have fear.” These lessons are “good not only for Rosario, but for universities around the world,” said Peña. And we couldn’t agree more.

Peña is now part of a team of three working on the parking app that they began developing at 3DS. He says, “this kind of parking lot sharing app already exists in San Francisco and New York, but we are trying to make it accessible to different communities, particularly student communities who are suffering from this problem.” His is only one of many innovative and community-focused ideas that came out of the Rosario program

The drive that these students have to solve problems and make positive change in their communities is remarkable. But perhaps the most impressive aspect of our Rosario programs is the immense support and desire that those larger communities have for them. They are unified behind the students –– particularly through local mentors –– to bring entrepreneurship to the forefront. And, through 3DS, Rosario is leading the charge: making the programs stronger and stronger, and opening the door for more and more students from outside the university.

Participants hard at work after customer discovery on day 2.

The students and organizers at 3DS Rosario are truly groundbreaking and embody why 3 Day Startup continues to push to further countries and ecosystems across the globe. Entrepreneurship can change lives and communities in more ways than through just economic success. It can motivate, inspire, and show students an option that is always open to them and that they can make into their reality.

See more of the 3DS Rosario 2016 participants here:

]]>ellysonhttp://3daystartup.org/?p=1779762016-10-11T14:12:40Z2016-09-21T14:47:43ZEntrepreneurs, educators, and 3 Day Startup alumni! We are proud to announce our first ever 3DS Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards. We value the entrepreneurs and innovators making outsized change in their communities. They solve problems, inspire others, and move us towards a better future. Now we want to recognize them.

We designed these awards to celebrate and commemorate the exceptional and innovative work that entrepreneurs are doing across the globe.

Because we know that university leaders in innovation and entrepreneurship emerge from all corners of campus, we are accepting nominations for the following awards:

Top 25 Entrepreneurship Professors
Top 25 Student Entrepreneurs
3DS Alum of the Year
3DS Lead Organizer of the year
Top Campus Innovation Initiative

These awards are for that professor who inspires you and gives you the tools to make your vision a reality, the student who makes incredible strides in their own startup, the organizer who goes above and beyond to bring a 3DS program to your school, and the university initiative that opens the door for innovation and entrepreneurship for you and your peers.

We encourage students, alumni, university administrators, faculty members, and entrepreneurs to submit nominations and share the nomination form with their friends and colleagues.

How voting works:
– You can submit a nomination for each category, but only one per person-per category
– You can nominate yourself
– For Top Entrepreneurship Professors and Top Student Entrepreneurs we will accept nominations both within and outside of the 3DS network
– For 3DS Alum of the Year, 3DS Lead Organizer, and Top Campus Innovation Initiatives we will only accept nominations from within the 3DS network
– We will accept nominations from outside the U.S. for all award categories

Winners:
– Winners of the Top 25 awards (professors and student entrepreneurs) will be included on our featured blog post detailing their story and accomplishments and will receive a commemorative t-shirt from 3 Day Startup that shows the world the impact of their efforts.
– Winners of the 3DS network awards (Alum of the year, Lead organizer of the year, Top Campus Innovation Initiative) will be included on our featured blog post detailing their story and accomplishments and will receive a ticket to this year’s Global Roundup Conference as well as formal recognition at the conference.